Now that you have had a chance to experience science education as it actually occurs, it might be useful for you to reflect on the role that you want inquiry to play in your own classroom. Before you do this, please look back on the resources and results from questions 3 and 4 from our inquiry jigsaw activity from last semester. After this review answer the following questions:
After considering the expectations for classroom inquiry presented in state and national standards what you think you will try to do in your own classroom?
Since inquiry lessons can take any form and any amount of time, I will try to provide a variety of inquiry based lessons in my classroom.
Basic hands on activities are the easiest to plan and put together, so these types of lessons will be used on a frequtent basis. Although many of these activities may not have the student performing complete "inquiry" they provide students with a chance to see the actual objectives of a unit from a different point of view (where they can actually experience it). In addition to these types of activities, I will also have students participate in labs where they can use partial inquiry. In other words, I may give the students the question but have them create the procedure, or I may have them come up with the question on their own but have them copy a procedure I have created. These lessons take longer to prepare and complete, but are more beneficial to the students because it gives them the sense of self directing their learning. The last type of inquiry lessons my class will participate in are full blown inquiry activities. These take a long time to create and complete, but are by far the most beneficial to the student. It takes practice to prepare students for these types of activities, and we will have to work up to them from the less extensive inquiry activities. Since the time these lessons take is great, they will probably be less common, and more suitable for a large project or lab.
What resources and other forms of support do you think would be useful in order to be able to support classroom inquiry during your early years of teaching?
Computers are one of the easiest resources to use for inquiry activities because there is a wealth of programs out there already created which contain inquiry activities and tasks. Also, they are a great tool for research and many good inquiry projects could be research based. Another great resource for inquiry activities are other teachers. Each teacher in the school probably has atleast one or two really good inquiry activities that they would be willing to share with a beginning teacher.
After considering the expectations for classroom inquiry presented in state and national standards what you think you will try to do in your own classroom?
Since inquiry lessons can take any form and any amount of time, I will try to provide a variety of inquiry based lessons in my classroom.
Basic hands on activities are the easiest to plan and put together, so these types of lessons will be used on a frequtent basis. Although many of these activities may not have the student performing complete "inquiry" they provide students with a chance to see the actual objectives of a unit from a different point of view (where they can actually experience it). In addition to these types of activities, I will also have students participate in labs where they can use partial inquiry. In other words, I may give the students the question but have them create the procedure, or I may have them come up with the question on their own but have them copy a procedure I have created. These lessons take longer to prepare and complete, but are more beneficial to the students because it gives them the sense of self directing their learning. The last type of inquiry lessons my class will participate in are full blown inquiry activities. These take a long time to create and complete, but are by far the most beneficial to the student. It takes practice to prepare students for these types of activities, and we will have to work up to them from the less extensive inquiry activities. Since the time these lessons take is great, they will probably be less common, and more suitable for a large project or lab.
What resources and other forms of support do you think would be useful in order to be able to support classroom inquiry during your early years of teaching?
Computers are one of the easiest resources to use for inquiry activities because there is a wealth of programs out there already created which contain inquiry activities and tasks. Also, they are a great tool for research and many good inquiry projects could be research based. Another great resource for inquiry activities are other teachers. Each teacher in the school probably has atleast one or two really good inquiry activities that they would be willing to share with a beginning teacher.